The use of stents is well known. A stent is an elongated device used to support an intraluminal wall. In the case of stenosis, a stent provides a conduit for blood in the area of the stenosis. Stents may taper or otherwise include portions of varying cross sectional shapes and areas. Bifurcated stents having multiple tubular sections, each section having a distinct cross sectional shape and/or area are also well known. The longitudinal axis of any given section may be offset from that of the other sections. Examples of bifurcated stents are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,723,004 to Dereume et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,994,071 to MacGregor, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,735 to Richter, et al., the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Devices for reducing the diameter of cylindrical stents are generally known, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,360,577 to Austin, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
There remains a need for an apparatus capable of reducing the diameter of tapered and bifurcated stents and other implantable medical devices which may have non-circular cross-sections, cross-sections of non-uniform shape and/or area, non-uniform cross sections along a longitudinal axis, portions having offset axes, and various combinations of such features.
There further remains a need for an apparatus capable of reducing the diameter of an implantable medical device that avoids subjecting localized portions of the device to high pressure.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.